PUTNAM COUNTY, N.Y. -- Two Putnam County high schools were ranked among the nation's best by The Daily Beast.

Both Mahopac High School (No. 397) and Carmel High (No. 546) made the list of 735 schools.

The Daily Beast compiled its ranking by contacting every school in the country with graduation rates above 85 percent. With approximately 1,200 schools completing the survey, The Daily Beast then ranked each school in the following categories with percentage weights:

Four-year cohort graduation rate (30 percent)

College acceptance rate (30 percent)

College preparedness (30 percent)

College entrance exams (10 percent)

Neighboring Westchester County boasted five schools in the rankings.

Hastings was the top-ranked school in that county, coming in at No. 61 with Bronxville just behind at No. 67, The Daily Beast said. Pelham High School came in at No. 148. Tuckahoe and Hendrick Hudson rounded out the Westchester representatives at 378 and 448, respectively.

Comments (1)

These surveys and rankings are befuddling. This list of the nation's "best" schools does not include Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Byram Hills, or Horace Greeley, all schools that usually make the "best" lists. Those of us who have not parsed the metrics for the rankings can hardly be expected to make any sense of them.